Water, energy, and carbon integrated footprint analysis from the environmental-economic perspective for apple production in China

Abstract

The ecosystem currently suffers from water-, energy-, and food-scarcity as well as climate change caused by population growth and industrialization progress. To analyze these four challenges, the integrated consideration from environmental and economic perspectives are highly needed. This study constructed an environmental–economic coupled water, energy, and carbon integrated footprint (WECF) assessment method to evaluate apple production in China. The overall environmental WECF of apple production in 2019 on human health, ecosystem quality, and resource depletion categories were 3.0 × 104 disability adjusted life years, 323 annual species loss, and $ 5.6 × 109 respectively. The overall cost of apple production in China in 2019 was $ 1.6 × 1010, including 95.3% of internal costs and 4.7% of external costs. Additionally, ∼ $ 5.6 × 109 of net profits in China were observed. The environmental WECF was dominated by fertilizer production process and irrigation, whereas the internal costs of labor and fertilizer and external costs of human health were the major contributors to economic impacts. In addition, approximately 3.8 × 106 disability adjusted life years in health life were avoided due to the nutrition intake from apples in 2019. Results suggest that the current apple planting layout in China for high-quality apple production is suitable for an environmental and economic win–win situation despite the existing water scarcity situation. However, compared with Europe, the global standing of China's apple production in terms of WECF is still at a low point because of the backward irrigation facilities and technologies, high fertilizer consumption rate, and low apple production yield per unit area. Therefore, adopting suitable water-saving irrigation technologies following local conditions, exploring driven forces on the water- and fertilizer-saving technologies, and increasing apple yield per area is highly recommended.